Hi Jeff - like others I think that the TOC promises a pretty comprehensive coverage of printing, I'm sure to be getting a copy of the book when it's released. Couple of thoughts though - a section on common printing problems could be worth including, possibly as an appendix with cross references to the chapters of the book that address the issue(s), and in the print resolution section please explain the circumstances when one should upsample and/or downsample to get the best results from the printer based on your experience.

What I'd like to see as a novice printer is what kind of information should an artist put on a print, where should it be and how can Lightroom help me. Hopefully its clear I'm talking about information like tiltles, artist name, dates, image info, print info etc.

Jeff, it seems to me that the section on "Print Substrates" might be better placed in Chapter 4 on Making the Print. Everything else in Chapter 5 has to do with the print AFTER it has been ejected by the printer. Also, I (and maybe I misunderstand this) think of my printing workflow as a combination of the aspects of preparing the image (Chapter 3) and actually making the print (Chapter 4). That would suggest considering putting your chapter on Developing a Printing Workflow before the treatment of Attributes of the Perfect Print. Putting the workflow discussion last treats it more like a recipe/here's how I do it/ addendum to everything. In fact, I think you will find a huge interest among your readership in the workflow details. If you made the workflow discussion Chapter 5, then the culminating chapter would be the final evaluation of the printed result and any further treatment of it -- a fitting ending. --But you are the experienced author, not me. Many of us will be looking forward to your guidance, and appreciate your giving us a sneak peek at your contents list. --Barbara

I was surprised by the comment in this thread about rendering intent, particularly perceptual and relative colorimetric, not being covered well anywhere. I would suggest "Real World Digital Photography," 2nd edition, by Katrin Eismann, Sean Duggan, and Tim Grey (yes, this goes back to 2004), p. 622, for an excellent one-paragraph description with what happens with the two intents when moving from one color space to another. For an even more nuanced understanding of the implications, one can go to two books by Martin Evening, "Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers" (an oldie-but-goodie from 2002), p.92-93, and "Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers," (2010) pp.670-673. I do know there is much to be gained from reading about a difficult or technical topic in more than one treatment of it. So we could definitely look forward to how Jeff distills this. Nevertheless, there is good material out there on this. I'll add a way of looking at this which actually sounds like an approach Jeff would enjoy using to describe these rendering intents (he could give me credit!): If we think of a map of the United States as a map of a color space, and everything out of the U.S. as an out-of-gamut color, then with Relative Colorimetric, everything outside of the U.S. gets put in the same place (same color) as the nearest point at the U.S. border. So Mexico City and Sao Pauo both get mapped to a U.S. border city, appearing with the same color as those border cities, and Paris becomes the same color as a city on the U.S. eastern seaboard. And nothing changes within the map. With Perceptual, when we want to incorporate out-of-gamut colors (out-of-the-U.S. cities), we compress the locations of existing cities in the U.S. and bring the foreign cities in, maintaining some separation, and therefore the perceptual differences between them, but at the expense of some shift in what started out as in-gamut (in-map). This gives a worse-than-deserved rap to Relative Colorimetric, as our out-of-gamut colors in photography won't be as out-of-gamut as Sao Paulo or Paris are to the U.S. But I think this is an interesting way of visualizing what happens. Photography is fun! --Barbara

Jeff, it seems to me that the section on "Print Substrates" might be better placed in Chapter 4 on Making the Print. Everything else in Chapter 5 has to do with the print AFTER it has been ejected by the printer.

I appreciate the feedback...if you take the TOC as a linear thing from front to back, yes, I can see the logic of what you are saying...but (there's always a but), Preparing Images for Printing and Making the Print are really tied together...to me, a discussion of paper before making the print would interrupt that two chapter flow–which is, I think, the heart/meat of the book (based on page count and importance).

Once you learn how to prepare and print, then aspects of what makes a perfect print comes into play after you've learn how to make a print. As far as the workflow, again, it's really not until you've learned the aspects of preparing and printing that you can really understand the importance of workflow. Printing from Photoshop or Lightroom is already covered in Making the Print...it's how to optimize the workflow–particularly if you are combining apps or using 3rd party RIPS that the aspects of tuning a workflow becomes critical.

Again, I appreciate the feedback...I had to think about it, but I think my order is still optimal and heh, there's no rule you must read the chapters in the order I put them into the book :~)

I was surprised by the comment in this thread about rendering intent, particularly perceptual and relative colorimetric, not being covered well anywhere. I would suggest "Real World Digital Photography," 2nd edition, by Katrin Eismann, Sean Duggan, and Tim Grey (yes, this goes back to 2004), p. 622, for an excellent one-paragraph description with what happens with the two intents when moving from one color space to another. For an even more nuanced understanding of the implications, one can go to two books by Martin Evening, "Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers" (an oldie-but-goodie from 2002), p.92-93, and "Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers," (2010) pp.670-673. I do know there is much to be gained from reading about a difficult or technical topic in more than one treatment of it. So we could definitely look forward to how Jeff distills this. Nevertheless, there is good material out there on this.

With due respect, a "one-paragraph description with what happens with the two intents" is exactly what I would argue against. One paragraph for each of relative colorimetric, absolute colorimetric, and saturation, may well suffice. But perceptual is much more complex in its implementational details than the others, and deserves a longer and deeper treatment.

... And, it isn't for the lack of analogies and nuances, which are plentiful.

But perceptual is much more complex in its implementational details than the others, and deserves a longer and deeper treatment.

Uh huh, and you realize that "Perceptual' is "secret Sauce (meaning each company's implementation of "Perceptual" is proprietary).

The odds of getting much more that a generic definition of Perceptual is an unrealistic expectation (and truth be told, you prolly wouldn't understand or be able to make use of it if it was totally explained).

Careful what you wish for bud...Perceptual rendering is a black box and your results will vary considerably based on what software/version of a particular Perceptual rending you are using. The rest of the rendering intends are more broadly documented...Perceptual is secret sauce.

I'll add a way of looking at this which actually sounds like an approach Jeff would enjoy using to describe these rendering intents (he could give me credit!): If we think of a map of the United States as a map of a color space, and everything out of the U.S. as an out-of-gamut color ...

I'll add a way of looking at this which actually sounds like an approach Jeff would enjoy using to describe these rendering intents (he could give me credit!): If we think of a map of the United States as a map of a color space, and everything out of the U.S. as an out-of-gamut color, then with Relative Colorimetric, everything outside of the U.S. gets put in the same place (same color) as the nearest point at the U.S. border. So Mexico City and Sao Pauo both get mapped to a U.S. border city, appearing with the same color as those border cities, and Paris becomes the same color as a city on the U.S. eastern seaboard. And nothing changes within the map. With Perceptual, when we want to incorporate out-of-gamut colors (out-of-the-U.S. cities), we compress the locations of existing cities in the U.S. and bring the foreign cities in, maintaining some separation, and therefore the perceptual differences between them, but at the expense of some shift in what started out as in-gamut (in-map). This gives a worse-than-deserved rap to Relative Colorimetric, as our out-of-gamut colors in photography won't be as out-of-gamut as Sao Paulo or Paris are to the U.S. But I think this is an interesting way of visualizing what happens. Photography is fun! --Barbara

Barbara has brought up an important topic: How does one best handle out of gamut colors when printing (or converting to sRGB for web output). Perceptual rendering can be tried, but it has problems and is not available with matrix profiles. Julieanne Kost gives some ideas on this topic in her Lightroom softproofing tutorial. Saturation maksing is another technique. Expanded coverage of this topic would be welcome in the new book.

With due respect, a "one-paragraph description with what happens with the two intents" is exactly what I would argue against. One paragraph for each of relative colorimetric, absolute colorimetric, and saturation, may well suffice. But perceptual is much more complex in its implementational details than the others, and deserves a longer and deeper treatment.

... And, it isn't for the lack of analogies and nuances, which are plentiful.

Brian A

Actually, if you are using SpyderPrint as a calibrator the discussion on 'saturation intent' should be longer.

Careful what you wish for bud...Perceptual rendering is a black box and your results will vary considerably based on what software/version of a particular Perceptual rending you are using. The rest of the rendering intends are more broadly documented...Perceptual is secret sauce.

What I would hold out hope for is a description of how one of the implementations works. An example, in other words.

Barbara has brought up an important topic: How does one best handle out of gamut colors when printing (or converting to sRGB for web output).

Although I fully plan on covering out of gamut colors in print and media/web, the simple fact is I think the whole issue of "Out of Gamut Colors" is overblown to a large degree. The more important aspect of dealing with out of gamut is seeing what an image will look like when transformed to the final color space and the best way of doing that is by soft proofing.

Clearly, soft proofing is limited by the color space of your display (which isn't a problem for sRGB export), but in my experience, soft proofing in Photoshop or Lightroom (with the edge given to LR) allows you the ability to adjust the way out of gamut colors will look when transformed.

The old PS Out of Gamut warning is pretty old school...(and the LR implementation isn't really an improvement) because it doesn't tell what the colors will look like nor how far out of gamut the colors are. Yes, you can toggle between Perceptual and RelCol and see which works best (for prints, not color space transforms which are hard wired to RelCol–even though the options to use Perceptual is mistakenly offered). For prints, I really only care what the colors are gonna look like...not the fact they may be out of gamut. Then, depending on the appearance under soft proofing, you can manually adjust the image to achieve the appearance at output. There are trick you can use to adjust HSL on a per color basis...but sometimes you just have to live with the reality that some output can't match the appearance in Photoshop or Lightroom and simply work to get the best final output you can...

Now, in the case of CMYK–because the gamut of the color space is so small–that becomes a real challenge...but I'll cover that a bit in the book as well. Sometimes ya just have to live with "it is what it is".